Posted:4th Jun 2006I've been busy designing recently and I'm happy to report I've made some serious progress! I've very nearly got the final prototype board fleshed out and a design I reckon ought to work very well for the casing.

I'll send off for the first set of prototype boards some time next week (still needs some tweaking and double-checking). I need to investigate a few more companies to find someone to make my polycarbonate balls. Just need to get the software up to scratch now. As it stands you'd need to have some special hardware to add new light sequences etc. into them... once I've got my head around a few things, you'll just be able to plug your hyperlights into a USB socket, fire up your software and tell them what you want!

Posted:22nd Aug 2006The idea of swapping the electronics from one housing to another screams "easiest way to destroy something" to me so I'll definitely not be doing that. Thinking about it though, seperate housings for seperate jobs makes a lot of sense. I've been coming up with all sorts of ways to try and get the poi to be easily changeable into juggling balls, but all the stuff I've thought about will almost certainly just add to their cost and (probably) end up making them more fragile as well.

This all leans towards making seperate toys for seperate jobs ...which makes designing things easier ...which means you're going to see HyperPoi sooner rather than later

[Edit] Got it in one; frosted housing and sintead of a lens to concentrate the light up the sock, you'd have a reflector which would bounce the light inside the ball instead [/edit]EDITED_BY: *HyperLight (1156170623)

Posted:22nd Aug 2006That was my original idea.. so you'd screw on a reflector to turn it into a juggling ball.

The problem is; if you do that, you've either got to carry a reflector around (which would probably get lost in about 5 minutes at a beach)... or you do something like having a refletor on one end of the ball and a clear cap on the other. That way you could keep them somewhere safe (on the hyperlight itself) and just swap the two ends when you need to. The problem then is that you need more screw threads to keep everything attached and screw threads add quite a lot to the cost of making the housings

Posted:22nd Aug 2006Just read the posts for the first time... Looking good I have a few projects on the go also that have some of the features your going for but quite different... maybe next year will be the year of LED Poi that is good news for Poi spinners

Posted:29th Aug 2006Well I'm keeping my fingers crossed on the profitable part. I think just seeing lots of people spinning HyperLights would be reward enough

Hey don't knock broom handles; They're excellent learning tools!

Made some progress over the bank holiday - the USB side of things is now working. You plug your poi into your USB socket and it will receive new sequences from the PC. Unplug the poi and they will start flashing your new sequences - dead easy. Not so easy to get working though. I had a few hair tearing moments and the PC almost had a flying lesson at one point, but it's all good now

Posted:29th Aug 2006Looking forward to having a play Jon. Unlikely to be free before the party on the 2nd, but maybe we could do a vid the week before Fal? Alternatively, maybe at Fal, hidden away somewhere?

Absolutely! A rough back-of-an-envolope-I-may-be-wrong calculation suggests there's space for ~6000 instructions. Now bear in mind that any sequence you make can be called by other sequences and we have provisions for up to 64 built in effects (that number could be increased as and when we think of more!)... the possibilities are rather staggering

Written by: Sym

Are there some built in ones?

Yes, there are a number of effects you can use like the stutter and rainbow fades you've seen in the photos. As well as that, there are a few built in sequences that I've come up with myself which combine the basic effects.

Written by: Sym

How do you select the one you want?

Currently there is no way to do this. The mark 3 prototypes I'll have at Falmouth will most likely have a switch to select. The final versions will probably use a system like Aerotech's i.e. tapping ...only it will be vastly simpler than their system. The way I think it'll work right now is that you'll tap it a few times to get it into 'select a program mode' and then a couple of (maybe one) taps to shift it on to the next sequence. That area still needs a bit of thought really - any suggestions

Looking forward to the visit already!

Written by: Mr_Chutney

Looking forward to having a play Jon. Unlikely to be free before the party on the 2nd, but maybe we could do a vid the week before Fal? Alternatively, maybe at Fal, hidden away somewhere?

I will think about the menus...I would want a 'preview' of the sequence when I selected it but then some of them might start in the same way so the preview would be hard. If I had 3 that all started the same (the slow bits at the start of a spin for example) then selecting the right one might be hard. You would need a 'select this one' tap as well.

Written by: *HyperLight

bear in mind that any sequence you make can be called by other sequences

I will think about the menus...I would want a 'preview' of the sequence when I selected it but then some of them might start in the same way so the preview would be hard. If I had 3 that all started the same (the slow bits at the start of a spin for example) then selecting the right one might be hard. You would need a 'select this one' tap as well.

I must admit, the same thought had occurred to me which is one reason I'm not 100% certain how to do it (yet)... I'm sure we'll think of something!

In any case, one of the things you'll be able to re-program is the code that actually drives the Poi. So if at a later date, a better (or just alternative) way of changing programs is devised, you'll just be able to download the new code from t'internet and upload it to your Poi

Written by: Sym

That has got me more excited than anything else you've said yet! WOW!

I thought people would like that one too

...and as for hiding them, that'd only be while we shot footage for the next promotional vid. In any case, I might well want a few additonal performers EDITED_BY: *HyperLight (1156849746)

Posted:30th Aug 2006I like the idea of a switch to change programs rather than the tapping method. I've watched a hobby juggler once performing with aerotech balls, he had a couple of drops and the balls bounced in such a way that they switched programs. The whole effect was ruined and he subsequently spent a good amount of time kneeling down and tapping the balls over and over on the floor in front of his audience.

Posted:30th Aug 2006I know what you mean about having a button, but they make me nervous because it's a potential weak point, and another opportunity for water to get into the ball. Another problem is that to avoid triggering the thing when you're spinning around and hit your poi together, I'd need to make them recessed slightly which means you'd probably need something to prod them with... which means you would probably need to take them out of the socks. Finally, it'll add to the cost of the things because I'll need to add a pair of switches to the build.

From a functional point of view though, I agree a pair of buttons (one for forward, one for back) would be much easier for the spinner.

Posted:31st Aug 2006I could imagine the same problem arising from a nervous poi spinner- the poi may smack in such a way that the program would change, or worse that one poi turns off completely. I'm pretty sure the end result would be the same as the juggler... it was one of those things that hurt a bit to watch cause I really felt what he must'ave been going through.

Posted:31st Aug 2006I've been thinking about this a little more.. what we need is something we don't do when we're spinning. So I thought to myself; what is the one thing we're least likely to do when spinning and worrying about knocking the things off? Staying still!

So if you were triggering from tapping, just have something that waits until you've had (say) 2 seconds without any movement followed by (say) 3 taps in quick succession.

You could do the same with the buttons. Make it so that to enter the 'switch mode to ....' option you have to hold the button down for (say) 2 seconds.

That way, it doesn't how much they're tapped together or knocked about while you spin

taps are suprisingly distinctive actually (when you mean to do them) because the acceeration tends to be harsher so I think even your cunning "3 wibble 2 second to 3 wibble combo move!" won't thwart it

It'll need some testing to get it just right (without making it silly). If we can get away without adding the buttons it would make for a much more rugged design I think... which can only be a good thing!

I was thinking some more about not being able to tell one sequence from another too. What if when you were tapping your way through the different programs, each one had a signature pattern that you could define? That way you could make something that's distinctive that you'll recognise without needing to go through the whole sequence